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Translated by Cardinal Newman.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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56 Pages
Page 54
52. Further, if, in confessing Father and Son, we spoke of two beginnings or two Gods as Marcion and Valentinus [3663] , or said that the Son had any other mode of godhead, and was not the Image and Expression of the Father, as being by nature born from Him, then He might be considered unlike; for such essences are altogether unlike each other. But if we acknowledge that the Father's godhead is one and sole, and that of Him the Son is the Word and Wisdom; and, as thus believing, are far from speaking of two Gods, but understand the oneness of the Son with the Father to be, not in likeness of their teaching, but according to essence and in truth, and hence speak not of two Gods but of one God; there being but one Form [3664] of Godhead, as the Light is one and the Radiance; (for this was seen by the Patriarch Jacob, as Scripture says, 'The sun rose upon him when the Form of God passed by,' Gen. xxxii. 31, LXX.); and beholding this, and understanding of whom He was Son and Image, the holy Prophets say, 'The Word of the Lord came to me;' and recognising the Father, who was beheld and revealed in Him, they made bold to say, 'The God of our fathers hath appeared unto me, the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob' (Exod. iii. 16); this being so, wherefore scruple we to call Him coessential who is one with the Father, and appears as doth the Father, according to likeness and oneness of godhead? For if, as has been many times said, He has it not to be proper to the Father's essence, nor to resemble, as a Son, we may well scruple: but if this be the illuminating and creative Power, specially proper to the Father, without Whom He neither frames nor is known (for all things consist through Him and in Him); wherefore, perceiving the fact, do we decline to use the phrase conveying it? For what is it to be thus connatural with the Father, but to be one in essence with Him? for God attached not to Him the Son from without [3665] , as needing a servant; nor are the works on a level with the Creator, and honoured as He is, or to be thought one with the Father. Or let a man venture to make the distinction, that the sun and the radiance are two lights, or different essences; or to say that the radiance accrued to it over and above, and is not a simple and pure offspring from the sun; such, that sun and radiance are two, but the light one, because the radiance is an offspring from the Sun. But, whereas not more divisible, nay less divisible is the nature [3666] of the Son towards the Father, and the godhead not accruing to the Son, but the Father's godhead being in the Son, so that he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father in Him; wherefore should not such a one be called Coessential?
[3663] Supr. p. 167, note 7, and p. 307.
[3664] henos ontos eidous theotetos: for the word eidos, cf. Orat. iii. 16 is generally applied to the Son, as in what follows, and is synonymous [?] with hypostasis; but it is remarkable that here it is almost synonymous with ousia or phusis. Indeed in one sense nature, substance, and hypostasis, are all synonymous, i.e. as one and all denoting the Una Res, which is Almighty God. The apparent confusion is useful as reminding us of this great truth; vid. note 8, infr.
[3665] De Decr. S:31.
[3666] [phusis is here (as the apodosis of the clause shows) as well as in the next section, used as a somewhat more vague equivalent for ousia, not, as Newman contends in an omitted note, for 'person,' a use which is scarcely borne out by the (no doubt somewhat fluctuating) senses of phusis in the passages quoted by him from Alexander (in Theod. H. E. i. 4, cf. Origen's use of ousia, Prolegg. ch. ii. S:3 (2) a) and Cyril c. Nest. iii. p. 91. phusis and ousia are nearly equivalent in the manifesto of Basil of Ancyra, whom Ath. has in view here, see Epiph. Haer. 73. 12-22.]
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/athanasius/councils.asp?pg=54
